


The Immortal Dead

by birdthatlookslikeastick



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Crack, Gen, Humor, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-16 19:03:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4636689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdthatlookslikeastick/pseuds/birdthatlookslikeastick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>It's beginning,</em> Lucas thought.  <em>The zombie apocalypse.  And I'm looking at patient zero.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Immortal Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to idelthoughts for the careful beta read, and to ArgylePirateWD for the fantastic prompt!

_O-kay_ , thought Lucas. _Chips, beer, Netflix queue, television positioned in front of couch, … different chips… That should be it._

Lucas wasn’t the sort to overplan a movie night, or even really plan one. He’d just posted “Pizza and Netflix at my house tonight, ladies! ZOMBIE MOVIE MARATHON! BOO-YAH! GRUUUUH! 7pm” on Facebook. The chips were an afterthought. But they were an excellent afterthought. Perhaps his finest.

The thing was, though: everybody seemed to be taking kind of a while to show up. It was 7:30, and still there was nobody there.

Lucas ate three chips in succession. Oh well, maybe the trains were running slow.

At 8:15, Lucas ordered a couple of pizzas. You know, just in case.

The pizzas arrived at 8:47, and were cold by 9:05.

Right.

Next time, he’d have to do up a proper poster for his Facebook post, maybe do some hustlin’.

He waited another 10 minutes (you know, just in case) before giving up and drawing a bath. While the water was running, Lucas opened a bag of chips, cracked open the lavender stash, cracked open the other stash, and stripped. He then carried his TV into the bathroom and started Night of the Living Dead playing.

Why not, right? Why not.

***

Lucas had finished Night of the Living Dead and was well into Paul W. S. Anderson’s Resident Evil: Afterlife (yes, it _was_ the fourth installment in a videogame tie-in franchise, but Lucas felt that the director _transcended_ this) when his phone rang. Puzzled, he paused the film.

"Yello?“

"Lucas, it’s Henry Morgan calling. I’m afraid I need to ask a favor of you.”

Lucas shook his head and sat up straighter, willing the water not to make any telltale sloshing sounds. He really would have preferred not to be wet, stoned and naked while talking to his (admittedly awesome) boss.

“Sure, what do you need?”

“Can you meet me by a warehouse by the East River in about forty-five minutes?”

Lucas tried to sound important.

“Yes, certainly. Forty five minutes from when?”

There was a heavy pause.

“Lucas, are you in the bath?”

Who even knew that you could frown over the phone. Jeez.

***

Lucas hunched over and jammed his hands into his leather jacket as he slouched his way down the alleys between the warehouses. _It's always a warehouse_ , he thought to himself. _Why is it always a warehouse_?

This particular warehouse was right on the East River. Funny how Dr. Morgan had seemed nervous about that, of all things. He wasn't nervous about sidestepping Detective Martinez' investigations, or showing up unarmed to what he obviously believed to be a slaughterhouse. But he was not keen on its proximity to the river. Lucas would be the first to admit that he couldn't always read people, but the whole precinct, and by now the whole OCME, knew that the East River was Henry's special swimming hole.

"The police won't act, but I know I'm right," Dr. Morgan had said on the phone. "We need to track this down on our own. I'll need a second set of hands to collect evidence and you're the best man for the job, Lucas."

The Best Man for the Job. Lucas felt a swell of pride and took a celebratory swig of the slurpee he'd acquired at the 7-11 on his way down to the train.

Lucas was more or less sober now, though not entirely undistracted. He'd left his one-man zombie marathon freeze-framed in the middle of a gruesome headshot in _Resident Evil: Afterlife._ Alice, charging across the rooftop, had just dispatched a zombie by holding her pistol to its head and pulling the trigger, and an ugly loop of blood was winging its way towards the camera. He was musing upon that as he strode down the alleyway, approaching the address Henry had given him.

The warehouse had a large delivery door, into which was inset a smaller, person-sized door. Beside the door-in-a-door stood an impeccably dressed, curly-haired figure, scarf blowing in the gentle summer breeze.

Lucas stood up straighter and, putting on as much swagger as he felt he could sensibly muster, strode forward to meet his boss. "Let's do this," he muttered to himself, taking another swig from his slurpee. Then, deciding at the last minute that there is little that is professional or badass about a slurpee, he surreptitiously stashed the cup just out of sight around the corner of the building. Secret operatives, he felt, do not carry slurpees. You only pack heat, not cold.

***

"Excellent. Lucas, hold the evidence bag open now, please."

Dr. Morgan, latex-gloved, was picking up a scrap of paper from the warehouse floor with a set of tweezers.

Lucas was fighting to keep the details straight in his mind—he was more tired and stoned than he'd thought. Henry had worked out that the only commonality between the three missing persons cases that the NYPD were tracking was one tax accountant by the name of Marion Chambers. Henry was sure she was the perp, but had no evidence. Lucas had discovered that much by overhearing the fight between Detective Martinez and Henry through Henry's closed office door. It'd been kind of irritating, actually, all that yelling; worse, Detective Martinez was furious, and therefore _really_ hot, and it had made it hard to focus on sucking out the stomach contents of the dead dude he’d been working on. _So_ distracting.

Anyway, the warehouse they were prowling around was owned by a brewery that Chambers was doing the books for, and nobody was gonna be in there because the brewery was in... Colorado? Chicago? Something-o, anyway. Henry was sure that the missing persons cases were murders, done _at_ the warehouse, but had no evidence which would stand up in court—not even the kind of court where you ask for a search warrant. So, here they were.

Dr. Morgan inspected the evening's take with evident satisfaction—several fragments of torn paper, a shirt button, a few hairs.

"Lucas, I think this should do it," he said. "This should be enough to link Chambers unequivocally to one of the missing persons, and to this warehouse."

The ceiling creaked. Dr. Morgan and Lucas froze.

Ceilings are not supposed to creak, thought Lucas sluggishly. The thing that creaks is... floors.

Belatedly, as if in one of Paul W. S. Anderson's epic bullet-time shots, Lucas' eye traced up the spiral staircase leading up to what was obviously, _obviously_ a half-height loft tucked above the warehouse entryway. At the top of the staircase there was a blonde woman dressed in dark clothes, with an unreasonably large gun of some sort pointed at Doctor Morgan. There was an impossibly loud cracking sound. Lucas' gaze dropped to Dr. Morgan, who was wearing a surprised expression, and who had an enormous exit wound in the middle of his chest.

Henry lifted his hand to point at the door and mouthed the word "Run" to Lucas. He looked like he was trying to actually shout, but with a sucking chest wound like that, his lungs wouldn't be able to pressurize his larynx enough even to whisper.

It was strange, thought Lucas, later, that even though he should have been freaking the fuck out, there was a small amount of his brain automatically devoted to doing his job. As he watched his boss drop, he started cataloguing. Dr. Henry Morgan’s future cause of death: high velocity gunshot wound through the chest, the angle, volume and color of blood indicative of aortic trauma and lung puncture. Time between injury and death: TBD.

A second shot rang out, spinning Henry's body abruptly as he sank to the floor, and a second gaping rose of a wound opened on the left side of Henry's torso.

With two gunshot wounds like that, Doctor Morgan would die within... oh... about thirty seconds, Lucas reckoned. A minute on the outside. That took care of the TBD speculation. If he looked at his phone right now, he could have a hell of an accurate time of death for the autopsy report. Instead of looking at his phone, Lucas looked up.

The woman with the gun—Marion Chambers, presumably—swivelled her gun to aim at him. It was still an epic, underrated, Paul W. S. Anderson slow-mo scene, which gave Lucas time to think. Yes, run, he thought. Yes.

He ran. Straight out the door, and straight down the path along the bank of the East River, shots smashing into the cobblestones behind him.

***

Lucas ran out of breath when he got to a sandy beach by the riverside. He'd only been running for a minute or two, but it was at a flat-out sprint, and Lucas did not, in the course of an ordinary day, sprint.

Lucas gasped, almost retching. Damn. He hadn’t run that hard since probably sometime in high school, and that memory had been thoroughly repressed, whatever it was.

He was still in extreme fight-or-flight mode. How was he going to stay alive? A crazy lady was trying to shoot him. Actually, given what Dr. Morgan had told him about Marion Chambers, it was much more likely that an extremely sane and competent lady was trying to shoot him. _Not_ cool. His mind, already shut down with weed and zombie movies, was shut down to an even lower level of non-functional with shock and fear, but here he was, supposed to be doing something anyway. He rubbed his hand over his forehead and tried to massage his brain into operation.

At first he wasn’t sure whether to involve the police, because he was definitely going to get into trouble, and the scale of trouble that you could get into for things like illegally scouting a warehouse with your boss, who went and got himself murdered while you hauled ass out of there, was pretty extreme. However, after thinking it over, he decided he'd rather be in trouble than dead. He pulled out the phone and keyed in 911, still holding the evidence bag in his left hand.

He looked behind him. No sign of Chambers. Had he lost her? Maybe she'd decided that it'd be better to run?

He shuddered, remembering against his will the sight of Dr. Morgan's arterial blood soaking his impeccable tailored shirt. It was a hauntingly familiar scene. It took him a second to figure out why, but then realized that it was a takedown from _Resident Evil: Afterlife_. Like Lucas had always said, _Resident Evil: Afterlife_ was so underrated; he'd just never realized how _true_ it all was.

Of course, in the film, the zombie kept relentlessly approaching until its entire brain was disintegrated by a point-blank shotgun headshot.

 _At least Chambers didn't shoot out Dr. Morgan's brain_ , Lucas thought. _He'll be back when the zombie apocalypse comes._

After thinking this, Lucas felt like an awful person for an eternity.

Pushing away the self-loathing, he pushed the send button on his phone. He gazed blankly across the river, trying not to think, as he held the phone to his ear.

"Hello? Hello, yes, I'd like to report a shooting..."

His voice trailed off.

That's funny, he thought. Something was surfacing in the East River.

Lucas' hand fell away from his face, still holding the yammering cell phone. A dreadful, irrational sense of foreboding was starting to fill the pit of Lucas' stomach, elbowing aside the perfectly rational shock and abject terror which was already there.

It was a person. A naked person, with pondweed plastered to their shoulder and chest. At least, he thought it was pondweed, the light was so bad. It could be blood, or some sort of horrible injury. As the person bobbed closer and reached the river bank, he thought it looked like a man.

It looked a lot like Doctor Morgan, actually.

Lucas' mind cycled through the possible explanations as quickly as he could.

Doctor Morgan must have crawled to the bank of the river, as Lucas was dashing away, and survived somehow?

He felt a brief surge of hope, which he immediately quashed. It didn’t make sense. He'd seen versions of Dr. Morgan's chest wound too many times in his career. You just don't recover from having that much of your heart and lungs removed with a hollow-point bullet. Even so, Lucas sprinted down the path.

Could Dr. Morgan have… Lucas didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Could he have metamorphosed into a fish—some kind of large, crime-solving fish, and thrown himself in the water? A crime-solving man-fish that was immune to bullets?

The figure staggered up onto the bank, water streaming off his body. Lucas met its gaze, as horrified recognition dawned in both their faces.

It _was_ Dr. Morgan.

But Dr. Morgan was dead.

 _He's buck naked,_ thought Lucas. _Like he just went for one of his naked swims_.

But you can't swim dead. He was dead, but now he was not dead.

Sort of… un… dead.

Lucas ran through possible explanations like an out-of-control bus running through protective guardrails on a canyonside highway, rapidly approaching the stomach-churning freefall of the truth. The _only_ possible explanation which fit even some of the facts.

 _At least Chambers didn't take out Dr. Morgan's brain_.

Oh, no.

Dr. Morgan lifted an arm and walked unsteadily directly towards Lucas.

Oh no. No no _no_.

 _It's beginning,_ Lucas thought. _The zombie apocalypse. And I'm looking at patient zero._

Lucas' mind shut down for the third time that evening.

He turned, dropped his madly chittering cell phone and his evidence bag, and ran.

***

Branches whipped his face as Lucas charged through a park.

He thought—or rather hoped, desperately hoped—that Dr. Morgan had died and been reborn as a _slow_ zombie, but it became immediately clear that he was able to run every bit as fast as he could have in life.

 _Okay_ , thought Lucas, _I can't lose him in the park. Gotta use my street smarts._

He sprinted out of the park and into an alley, the naked and presumably undead form of Dr. Morgan hot on his heels, only about a hundred feet behind him. The route ahead was as clear as an airport runway, and Lucas was losing his lead. Why did everyone run down alleys in chase scenes? It didn’t work! Where was the cart full of apples? Where were the two burly dudes carrying a pane of glass? This wasn’t going the way he’d pictured it.

 _Right_ , remembered Lucas. _I don't have any street smarts. Yeah_.

The alley, awash in the sour odor of old piss and garbage, opened up onto a deserted street. Lucas bolted out with Henry behind him, the gap closing fast.

But then, like a life-giving oasis in a barren desert, Lucas saw a subway station fifty feet down the road.

 _Maybe there's cops there_ , thought Lucas desperately. _Maybe Dr. Morgan won't be able to get through the toll gate._

He dashed in, fumbled to get out his fare card, swiped through, and dashed down the stairs to the train platform.

He cast a desperate glance behind him, but Dr. Morgan was nowhere to be seen.

***

Lucas slumped against the scratched window of the vacant subway car. It rattled down the tracks. What to do? Where to go?

What was he facing?

Lucas tried to calm his whirling thoughts.

 _Pretend you're in the bath_ , he thought, _getting freaky. Ahh._

 _Well, let's see, bright side, bright side_...

 _I'm alive_ , he thought. _For now_.

And, he realized, much of his life experience had suddenly become very, very relevant to his immediate chances of survival. He'd seen pretty much every movie ever made about zombies, not just _Night of the Living Dead_ and _Resident Evil: Afterlife_ , but in fact ALL of the _Resident Evil_ movies, multiple times, and also every other movie - _Dawn of the Dead_ , _World War Z, Boy Eats Girl…_ He’d made a decent attempt to go through the entire genre. There was a list of them all on Wikipedia. He'd also read most of the graphic novels on the matter, or at least the _important_ ones. The ones which had _vision_. If he could just think for a moment, he could marshall all of that zombie knowledge and figure out a way out of this mess. Unfortunately, thinking seemed to be basically out of the question.

The train clattered on. Lucas curled up into a slightly more fetal position.

How on earth did Dr. Morgan end up in the river, wondered Lucas. Had he crawled? Or been dumped in there by his murderer, Chambers? Why? Could you even still call someone a murderer if they just converted you into an undead abomination? Was that what had happened to Chambers' other victims?

Lucas slammed the side of his head against the train window a few times, as though to dislodge the thoughts. Not relevant. No time for that. He needed to figure out what to do right now.

Going to the police was clearly right out of the question. He'd just be thrown in a cell when he confessed to breaking and entering at the warehouse; nobody would believe him about Chambers (having lost the evidence bag), and obviously nobody would believe anything he said about Dr. Morgan. People tend not to believe in zombies until far, far too late. They'll be all "Oh, no, you know Dr. Morgan, he always acts kind of creepy. Ah, why are you gnawing my arm, Dr. Morgan?" And then they're on the train to zombie town, as it were. The braaaaain traaaaaain.

If he was shut in a cell, there'd be no escaping. Especially since Dr. Morgan, for whatever reason, seemed to be coming for him.

No, he had to stay mobile. He had to live on the run. He had to be able to act fast.

_Come on, Wahl. This is the part of the zombie movie where I have to make a plan. By the time the next plot twist happens I need to have transformed into a cold-ass mutherfucker who can wield dual shotguns._

He needed a gun. Two guns, ideally.

He didn't know the first thing about guns, really. Gun _wounds_ , yes. But guns themselves? What kind of gun do you use to take down a zombie? Shotguns, obviously, or chainsaws (which, thought Lucas sagely, _technically_ isn't a gun, but let's be real here, he’d take anything that worked at this point). And he'd need, like, a machete, or a baseball bat or something.

Lucas didn't like it; he didn't know how aware Dr. Morgan was, or how capable of rational thought he still was, but there was no alternative. He'd have to risk it.

He needed to consult his reference books.

***

Lucas stared, perplexed, at his collection of graphic novels, an empty duffel bag in his hand.

It was 3:00am.

There was no way to select just two or three graphic novels on surviving the Zombie apocalypse. Aside, of course, from "How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse". That went into his duffel bag pretty much immediately. It had widely acknowledged weaknesses, as it was really for a late-stage outbreak, but given that it was an actual survival guide, it was a pretty obvious choice. He was trying not to become Patient Two.

He flipped through the fourth volume of The Walking Dead. It had some good stuff in there; you needed a shotgun, obviously, and some sort of chopping implement in case they got too close. He also realized he'd need some rations, he hadn't thought of that. He flipped through it a bit more, and almost put it in the duffel before returning it to the shelf. He couldn't take it. It was the _fourth volume_. You don't just split up a series of graphic novels.

No, better to leave it there as part of the archaeological record. Millenia later, a future civilization of enlightened beings might excavate the ruins of Lucas’ apartment. _Ah,_ they would say, as they flipped through his substantial manga collection. _They were a great people._

Eventually he settled on a paperback Dragonball Z compendium, because it had some totally awesome fighting stances in it. Yeah, that'd help. He tossed it in his duffel bag.

Baseball bat, shotgun, rations... where did he even get that stuff? Spy store? Military store? Comic store? He thought maybe he'd seen an axe in a comic store once, but maybe that was wishful thinking.

_Think quick, Lucas. Think quick._

Maybe they sell guns, machetes, and rations in an outdoors store? That sounds like the sort of things you need for hunting and camping, maybe? He'd never really been to such a store, as far as he could remember. Lucas Wahl saw himself as an explorer of the _urban_ jungle.

He quickly went to his computer and googled the nearest outdoors store. There was one nearby, actually, but it didn't appear to have a firearms section. There was another one farther north on the island, but it had the same problem. No boom-sticks.

Damn. Of course. Firearms can't be legally sold or bought in New York proper. He _knew_ that.

He could get into the evidence room at work. Maybe. Probably not, actually.

He could drive to the suburbs, if he had a car. But nobody really needs a car in New York, everyone just uses Car2Go.

The word ‘Car2Go’ bounced around in Lucas' overtired, shellshocked mind, and a small plan began to nucleate around it.

***

Lucas hurried down his street, scanning the bumper-to-bumper cars. He'd booked a 2-seat smart car with the Car2Go website, but it wasn't where the website said it was meant to be. Normally he'd use his cell phone, but (stupid, stupid) he'd dropped it on the beach where Dr. Morgan had risen from the dead out of the East River.

When Lucas had realized he'd done this, he'd fired off a quick email to Detective Martinez before leaving home, explaining the more plausible parts of what had happened—namely, that Dr. Morgan had drafted him to do some guerrilla forensics down at the warehouse, and that they were shot at, that Dr. Morgan might not be OK, and that Lucas was on the run.

"P.S.," he’d added, "if you see Dr. Morgan, keep your distance and have him apprehended. I think he's gone crazy," Who knows, right? It might work. And none of that was a lie. Dr. Morgan definitely wasn't OK.

If nothing else, the police could now investigate that warehouse. Lucas figured that Marion Chambers would _have_ to go back there, if (as Henry surmised) the bodies were cached in there. If they were smart, they could even catch her red-handed. And Detectives Hanson and Martinez were very smart, and very fast. Hopefully smart enough and fast enough to outrun and outwit a zombie Dr. Morgan. He wasn't sure about that, actually. Even brain-dead, Dr. Morgan was probably smarter than most people.

Lucas tromped down the street, stepping over litter and bird crap. Where was that damn car?

Actually, now that he thought of it, Dr. Morgan hadn't appeared to be wounded at all as he came out of the river. Dr. Morgan had been covered with some substance which Lucas had originally thought was pondweed, the invasive seaweed working its way up the river and crowding out the indigenous fish species. He'd later decided that this dark substance was actually Henry's mortal wound, not pondweed. However, thinking back, he was pretty sure it WAS pondweed. It was, for one thing, green.

_Not helping, Wahl. Not helping. Find the car, then we can think._

"Lucas!" came a shout from behind him.

His head whipped around. Oh, no. Not again.

Clad in some kind of jogging pants, Dr. Henry Morgan was sprinting towards him.

Dr. Henry Morgan, in jogging pants.

That settled it. He was _definitely_ undead.

Goddamnit, where was the Car2Go? Lucas sprinted down the street scanning for the Smart Car. This was way lamer than any chase scene which had ever graced any zombie movie.

Dr. Morgan yelled again, getting closer. Lucas risked a glance over his shoulder, and saw, incongruously, that the jogging pants still had a large price tag hanging off them. He stole _jogging_ _pants_?

Dr. Morgan was getting uncomfortably close—maybe seventy feet, now? Sixty? Lucas put on a burst of speed that he didn't even know he was capable of.

Then, down a side street, he saw the unmistakeable blue-and-white shape of a Smart Car.

 _That's it,_ he thought. _That's my sweet ride out of here._

He took out his Car2Go card and waved it past the ID reader. It beeped and flashed a red light. Goddamnit, had he forgotten to pay his carshare membership fee again?

Morgan's footfalls were drawing closer. He swiped the card again, and this time was rewarded. The lights flashed and the locks clicked open. He jumped into the seat, jerked the car into gear, and peeled out in the street.

Henry Morgan was right in the middle of the lane, eyes wide and wild, yelling soundlessly as he waved his hands.

"Gruuhhhh to you too, motherfucker," said Lucas as he gunned it.

Doctor Morgan's head bounced off the Smart Car's windshield; his corporeal form was tossed into the air like a rag doll, twisting and spinning, beautifully lit by the neon and LED window display lights of the nearby vape shop. Turned out that having a filmmaker's eye for detail can come in handy in describing all sorts of situations, including the unexpected hit-and-running of undead medical examiners in stolen jogging pants.

_Oh god oh god oh god. This is unreal. I just killed my boss. Double-killed. Re-undeadened? Maybe that doesn't count as murder. Oh pleasepleaseplease let it not count._

Lucas hit the brakes, then thought about it and accelerated off again. If two direct hits from hollow-point bullets and a swim in the East River hadn't stopped Dr. Morgan, then there was no way a car crash was gonna take him down. If you want to stop a zombie, you gotta go for the brain. And, since a Smart Car wasn’t going to get that job done, he was going to get the hell out of here before he lost his chance to escape.

Behind him, unseen, the body of Henry Morgan vanished into nothingness before it even hit the ground.

***

Lucas had been driving hard. He'd hit the Smart Car's top speed of 53 mph as soon as he'd hit the highway, and kept the needle pinned there since.

The stores wouldn't open until 9:00am at the earliest, which meant he had a few hours. He figured he'd get as far out of the city as he possibly could. The thought of putting some miles between Dr. Morgan's living husk (and, for that matter, the serial-murdering tax accountant who was shooting at him not seven hours ago) seemed like a lovely idea.

He wanted a bath so badly. And a slurpee. A big lavender-oil bath with a marijuana slurpee. Shit, man. This was a Not Cool Situation.

At 8:07am, Lucas nearly drifted off to sleep and jerked awake only when the Smart Car hit the right-side rumble strip. That was far too close. He had to pull over and rest. Fortunately there was a rest stop on the right within about 10 miles, so he made for it, slapping his face with one hand continually to stay awake. He could afford to take a short nap. Dead or alive, he was pretty certain that Dr. Morgan wasn't able to drive on the freeway.

Images flashed through Lucas' mind as he drifted between wakefulness and sleep, reclined in the driver’s seat of the Smart Car at the highway rest stop.

Doctor Morgan, falling to the ground, turning sharply with Marion Chambers' second shot.

Marion Chambers, turning her gun to point at him.

Alice in _Resident Evil: Afterlife_ taking out the Axeman with an epic shotgun headshot.

Dr. Morgan, arising dripping from the river.

Detective Martinez, shouting at Dr. Morgan behind the closed door of his office.

Slowly, horribly, like when Paul W. S. Anderson's epically panned the camera from the hordes outside to the forgotten back door of the safe house, a truth dawned on Lucas. His eyes opened wide.

He was the only person who knew that New York City was about to be subsumed by a rising tide of the living dead. And here he was, 2 hours outside of town.

Only he knew the capabilities of the new species.

This particular sort of zombies seemed to be able to run at top speed, to speak, and even to reason. Henry had known to find Lucas at his house. He'd known to get clothes before he did that, even if they were clothes he would never ordinarily wear. Maybe that had been why he hadn't gone into the subway station.

Actually, now that Lucas thought about it, zombies shouldn't be able to run at top speed if their chest cavity is blown out. You need your core muscles to run. The spinal cord needs be present.

"Oh shit," Lucas said to himself. "They can heal."

He jerked the keys in the ignition, and the tiny, hamster-wheel-like engine of the Smart Car did its best to roar to life.

The clock read 8:29am. He'd slept for 20 minutes. It'd have to do.

A tall, thin man with coke-bottle glasses walked by, with a large mutt on a leash. The dog turned its butt at Lucas and took an enormous dump. He hadn't really needed to see that, but it was a visceral reminder: the city would now be awake and Dr. Morgan's reign of terror would be beginning.

There was no time to waste. Time to get back on the road.

***

Lucas wandered listlessly down the aisles of Cabela’s, wheeling a large shopping cart.

He'd been thrown off by the “mandatory gun check” booth at the front door. Why did they even need to _ask_ that? This was not his kind of place. It gave him the creeps. He had to find what he needed and go.

Disoriented, Lucas looked at a wall of dried rations. They all looked suspiciously like cork.

He heard a woman clearing her throat behind him.

"Sir? You probably don't want that machete."

Lucas turned around blearily. Behind him was a shorter woman about his age in a Cabela's uniform, with jet-black hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Her badge read "Marnie." She was frowning.

"Huh?" he said. His eyelids were like lead, and the world was blurring around the edges. "What?" he added.

Marnie replied, "Sir, I can't help but notice that you are purchasing dry rations, a machete, and a case of shotgun shells. Also, you are quite clearly not from around here. If I may be so bold, sir, I expect you are putting together your zombie survival kit?"

"Er," replied Lucas.

"I would recommend, instead, a sturdy, all-metal hatchet from Aisle 7, rather than the machete which you have selected; it may be used as a blunt weapon, whereas the machete is useful only for slashing. In certain zombie scenarios, slashing-type melee weapons are disfavored."

"Um, what?" said Lucas.

"In addition," continued Marnie, warming to her subject, "a hatchet can be lashed to a stout staff to form a crude polearm, much like a medieval halberd, as I am sure you are aware. We have sturdy deep-water carbon-fiber fishing poles in Aisle 19, and nylon shock cord for lashing may be found in aisle 10."

Lucas put down the machete slowly. Marnie was _awesome_.

“You’ve really thought this through." He tried to look casual and cool. “Thanks, appreciate the advice.”

Marnie seemed very pleased with herself.

"I would also point out, sir, that the light-gauge shot which you have selected would not be as effective as a heavier-gauge shell. Would you like assistance in selecting the correct shotgun with which to survive the first wave of attacks?"

What did she know? Did she know? Was it on the news already? But she didn’t look panicked, just really really helpful and eager.

"Yeah. Look, it's not really a _wave_ I'm worried about. Just one, for now."

And it all tumbled out, the whole story. He couldn’t believe he was telling someone this. It was not a very long story, actually. His genius boss was now a zombie and wanted his brains. Short, succinct, neatly stated. It’d make a good back cover summary for his eventual docu-horror’s novelization, come to think of it.

Marnie nodded sagely, listening carefully.

"Ah. You may be right. I do have some expertise in these matters." Marnie leaned in conspiratorially. "While I, myself, am more than prepared for the inevitable, I seldom find that other customers share my appreciation of the risks."

Lucas was flabbergasted.

“You believe me?”

“Why would I not? The zombie apocalypse is _clearly_ imminent. I’ve known for years.”

“Sure, sure, but if you believe that, why are you here? Not holed up in a bunker somewhere, setting traps and practicing sweet fighting stances?”

This one got an eye roll from Marnie.

“Sir, if you want to survive the undead plague on a fixed budget, you are going to want to look into outdoors store employee discounts.”

***

Lucas stood in the parking lot of the massive suburban Cabela's, transferring rations, hatchet, ammunition, and an employment application form into his duffle bag.

He'd told Marnie about his movie marathons and she’d thought the idea was pretty cool, so that was something. Maybe she’d actually come to the next one. Too bad everyone was about to die in a nightmarish plague of animated corpses.

Lucas placed the shotgun into the duffel bag, but took it out again, loaded it (after carefully consulting the instructions) and placed it back in the bag. After some further thought, he removed the hatchet from the duffel bag and attached it to his belt via its leather strap.

While he was in the store, the lot had filled up with enormous pickup trucks with lift kits. One of them had Truck Nutz. Suddenly he was struck by how little of the suburbs he understood. Zombie outbreak or no, he had to get back to the city.

Besides, his friends were there. Or, his coworkers, anyway. Only he had the knowledge to save them.

He had to go back in.

***

Lucas crossed over the bridge into Manhattan at 11:47am. He still hadn't the faintest idea what to do.

Should he find Detective Martinez and Detective Hanson? Should he go home and barricade up? Should he find some defensible place to wait for Dr. Morgan? Set booby traps and think of more epic one-liners?

He didn't know, so for lack of a better idea, he went home. Maybe they’d replied to his email.

He stepped through the lobby of his apartment block and pushed the elevator button, which lit up.

As he waited, he heard a footstep beside him, and someone laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Lucas! Finally,” said the very last voice he wanted to hear.

Stupid, _stupid_ —Lucas had gone and let himself think he was safe, which was always when the monsters attack. That was basic Movie 101. Without wasting time on turning to look, Lucas sprinted out the building, slamming the door behind him.

"Lucas! I need to talk to you!"

_Shitshitshit—_

Lucas turned a corner, and then quickly turned down an alley, but as before, there was nothing to slow down a high-speed zombie, and nowhere to hide. No time, no time—he had to make his stand. Lucas tossed the big black duffel on the ground and pulled the shotgun out of it.

Dr. Morgan came running around the corner seconds later, still shouting.

"Lucas, stop! I can explain!"

Lucas, utterly terrified, assumed his favorite Awesome Fighting Stance to compensate. He pumped the shotgun and lifted it to his shoulder. Much later on, Lucas rued the fact that he had been so consumed by fear, as this probably would be the most badass thing that he ever did in his life.

"Eat headshots, zombie scum!" Lucas shouted, and fired.

The recoil from the shot knocked Lucas over entirely and badly hurt his shoulder. The point-blank shotgun blast, for its part, removed the right half of Morgan's face.

Bam. Headshot. He'd have to work on his one-liners, but still.

Morgan fell over, wordlessly screaming, and then disappeared right before Lucas' eyes.

What the actual everloving fuck.

 _That is not what is supposed to happen,_ thought Lucas, using his few remaining functioning brain cells.

There were NO zombie books where the zombies disappeared after taking a headshot. It was exactly the opposite of disappearing. They stayed very much appeared. In fact they were usually spread over a rather large area.

That didn't even happen in any of the _lesser_ zombie graphic novels.

What.

But he’d destroyed the brain, so… dead. Proper dead.

Right?

***

Lucas shakily headed back towards his apartment, but immediately realized that he'd just discharged a shotgun in the middle of Manhattan, so maybe it'd be a better idea to not do that. There hadn't been anyone who'd seen, but still it wasn't a subtle move. Instead, he swiped back into his Car2Go and drove back down to the warehouse where this whole mess had begun.

He didn't know why, and he didn’t have a plan beyond that eventually Detectives Hanson and Martinez would be showing up there; he'd emailed them and told them to. Maybe this way, he reasoned, he could wait until Detective Martinez showed up and then turn himself in.

No, in all honesty, he'd just run out of places to go. If he'd been thinking straight, he thought later, then maybe it would have been smarter to just go to the precinct.

He parked the Smart Car around the corner, next to his Slurpee cup from the night before, and stepped inside the door.

This time, Lucas took careful note of his surroundings. Above him, a loft, with a reclaimed spiral staircase. In front of him and to the right, some large metal vats, presumably full of beer, or beer bits ready to become beer. At the back of the warehouse, a heavy metal door, probably a walk-in fridge or something. Behind the metal vats, a second loading bay door. There were tall stacks of crates everywhere.

Some of those probably have bodies in them, he thought. Whatever, he was going to go in and wait for the detectives to show up. The middle of the warehouse was a defensible position, and he was ready to make a last stand if he needed to. No zombies were sneaking up on him anymore. He walked in quietly, ready to find himself a good spot to sit and wait.

Behind and above him, he heard the rustling of papers from the loft. He froze. Someone was there. Who, though? The rational explanation would have been Detective Martinez and Hanson, but any film director knew that at this point in the story, the person up top was going to be Marion Chambers, or maybe even Dr. Morgan.

Shotgun in hand, Lucas turned and looked up. There was a simple desk—a door laid across two barrels—at which Marion Chambers was seated, stuffing papers into a briefcase.

He took a step back, ready to sneak out of sight and hide until she was gone, unfortunately kicking a stone across the floor as he did so. Chambers looked up and they made eye contact.

This was it. The Boss Battle. The Last Stand. He couldn’t fuck this up.

Chambers reached out lightning-fast for something on her desk and then spun around in her office chair. She had a gun in hand. Lucas fired his shotgun without thinking; this time the shot didn't knock him over, but the recoil still threw his aim off completely; it hit the roof, raining down a cloud of dust as Chambers dove for the loft floor.

Lucas looked around wildly for cover. The crates—which ones had the bodies in them? It would be totally uncool to take shelter behind those. Or maybe they _were_ full of beer. This was a beer warehouse, right? But did beer even go in crates? He chose a huge vat to the left near the warehouse wall which looked like it would shield his whole body, and ran for it.

Three bullets pierced the vat as Lucas skidded behind it. Some sort of grain began pouring out of the holes, making a _shhh_ noise. Barley, maybe? Or hops? Was hops even a grain?

Lucas cracked open the shotgun and rooted in his pocket, but found nothing. He was out of shells, and he'd dropped his duffel bag in the middle of the floor. He was trapped with only a hatchet, and he didn’t think he had much chance of hitting Chambers with a hatchet throw.

This was really, really bad.

 _This is the part where the villain usually lays bare their masterful plot_ , thought Lucas. Instead, all he was getting from Chambers was an impressive stream of swearing.

Another shot. This one zipped through the vat and burst out the metal next to Lucas’ head and above his shoulder. He flinched as a shower of grain poured over him, pinging off his head and shoulder, getting into his hair and into his shirt.

Shock, fatigue and outrage fought for control of Lucas' mind.

This whole thing was ridiculous. Re-frigging-diculous. He was a lab tech, and a filmmaker, dammit. He was tired, he'd been shot at, his ears were ringing, his shoulder hurt, he was covered in beer ingredients, and he just wanted to stop. The fight had left him entirely.

He tossed his gun on the ground to the side of the vat. It hit the cement floor with a thud.

“I surrender!” he shouted. “Stop shooting!”

“Hands up, and out where I can see you!” Chambers shouted, her voice echoing in the warehouse from her position up on the loft.

She really lacked the confident gloating of a true Boss. Lucas was disappointed in himself; he should have done better with this, but he was too tired. Even so, his feet wouldn’t move. He was still smart enough to know that she’d shoot him the moment he appeared.

Stand-off. What did he do now?

He heard sirens approaching, and he stopped. A few seconds later, there was the screech of tires outside. A few seconds after that, the warehouse door slammed open.

"This is the NYPD!" a female voice shouted.

Lucas peered around the vat with a quick glance, then ducked back to safety. Oh thank fucking Christ. It _was_ Martinez, with Hanson behind her; they were doing that awesome cop gun-shootout pose. Best deus ex machina _ever_.

"Detective Martinez? I'm over here!" shouted Lucas, still behind the vat.

"Lucas?! What the hell is going on!"

Gunshots rang out.

“Oh yeah, and Chambers is trying to kill me,” Lucas shouted. “She’s got a gun.”

There were shouts, running footsteps, more impressive swearing from Chambers, then the firing of service pistols. Lucas could hear Hanson on the radio, calling for backup.

 _Oh shit oh shit oh shit what do I do_ , he thought, back pressed to the vat, which was still pouring out over him like a grainy morning shower.

The firefight between the police and Chambers raged on at the front of the building. Lucas, now completely uninvolved in the violence and having just experienced a rather bad couple of days, felt an odd, fatalistic calm descend upon him. He stared meditatively at the door next to him.

Wheels started turning in his overtaxed brain, creaking slowly. He was an idiot. There was a _door_ beside him; it was the warehouse’s side loading door, which led out to the river. It was locked from the outside, but not the inside. He could just leave…

Or not, because just then, quietly, horribly, the doorknob beside Lucas began to rattle.

"Lucas!" a voice hissed quietly. “Are you there?”

It was Dr. Morgan.

"Stay calm!" hissed the doctor. "I won't hurt you!"

What? How was he still alive? Lucas had destroyed his brain, and disappearing act or not, those were the rules—no brain, no zombie.

It wasn't fair. Dying in a gunfight was bad enough, did he have to get eaten by his invincible zombie boss too?

"What the hell kind of zombie are you?" Lucas shouted through the door. “This is stupid, Henry! What’s it gonna take to off you?”

"Lucas, if I knew that, I promise you I’d have taken care of it years ago." The doorknob rattled some more. More calmly, Dr. Morgan said, “Lucas, open the door. I’m not a zombie.”

Another stray bullet pierced the metal vat, and another stream of grain started pouring out over Lucas’ other shoulder.

"That sounds like the sort of thing a zombie would say, though."

"Lucas! Enough of your comic book rot! Open the door!!"

This was definitely going off-script from the completely gratuitous gore-fest Lucas had been led to expect. Surely, during a zombie attack, you aren’t supposed to just _open_ the door the zombies are clamoring at, are you?

Then again, Dr. Morgan was certainly not acting like a zombie. In fact, thinking back, Dr. Morgan had never really acted like a zombie. Not a single _gruuuh_ or attempt to bite him. And he didn’t care what _World War Z_ said, zombies didn’t sprint.

Could he have hallucinated the whole thing?

Oh, _fine_.

Lucas opened the door.

The edge of Lucas' consciousness became aware that the gunshots had stopped, and that Hanson and Martinez were reading Chambers her rights. Lucas couldn't afford to pay attention to that though. He was six feet away from either his boss, or a fast-healing, fast-running, extremely clever zombie version of his boss. He needed every ounce of his concentration to survive.

He was dressed in a proper suit this time. He looked like normal, every day, uptight Dr. Henry Morgan, except for the panicked expression on his face.

"Lucas, I—look, I know there's a lot for you to take in right now, but..." Henry's eyes wandered over Lucas, and then downwards to the piles of grain. A puzzled expression drifted across Dr. Morgan’s face.

"Grain?" he said.

Lucas' ears were still ringing from the gunshots, but even half-deaf, it was unmistakeable.

Henry Morgan had just said "Brains."

_Well, fuck._

Lucas loosened his hatchet from its belt holster and, hidden in shadow, grasped it firmly in his right hand.

“Brains, huh?”

Henry looked baffled.

“No, grain, _grain_ , I was asking why there was grain…” He pointed at the floor as his voice trailed off.

“Oh, a vegan zombie? Nice try.”

He assumed an Awesome Fighting Stance, wound up, then ploughed the hatchet deep into the center of Dr. Morgan's forehead.

Dr. Morgan gave a horrible cry, staggering then falling to his knees in front of Lucas. Even with a hatchet between his eyes, he looked really irritated.

"This... all... seems… so... unnecessary..." gasped Henry, as he died, and then disappeared. Again.

The hatchet, curiously, disappeared with him.

"Boom," said Lucas weakly. “Headshot.”

He then passed out.

***

Lucas had been placed on leave after the unfortunate incidents in the warehouse. Not immediately, mind you. There'd been a round of questioning, handled by Detective Hanson in a surprisingly gentle way. Lucas' answers led to a few days' visit to a psychiatric ward, where Lucas was quickly judged not to be a danger to himself or others, and released.

When Lucas finally got back to his apartment, the first thing he did was box up all of his zombie graphic novels. He didn't want to sell them, really, he just wanted to free up the shelf space. Yes. Put out something else for a change. He unboxed all his Dragonball Z collections, and placed them in the empty space instead. Goku, man. He kicked ASS.

Lucas saw various sorts of grief and trauma counsellors over the next months, all through the NYPD or the M.E.'s office, as well as going in for a few official case interviews. In the end, the police decided not to press charges, even overlooking Lucas' illicit shotgun incident, in exchange for regular visits to a psychiatrist over the coming years. To be honest, Lucas had seen things he never wanted to see, and at some level thought that the visits were a pretty good idea. The psychiatrist was pretty cool, too; he knew a fair bit about Miyazaki, so there was plenty to talk about. And there were a few things about how his parents had always completely idolized his older brother and compared Lucas to him every chance they got because nothing Lucas ever did was _good enough.._.

You know, if it came up.

Even better, he got to keep his job if he wanted, which he did. The NYPD and the Medical Examiner's office concurred that Lucas had simply broken under stress, and could resume his work after a short medical leave. His psychiatrist told him that Dr. Henry Morgan was still very much alive, and still working as an M.E. When Lucas did return to work, Dr. Morgan would still be his boss. Lucas really wasn't sure how he felt about that, after having killed Dr. Morgan three times or so. He began to doubt that any of those deaths had even happened. The events with Dr. Morgan didn't fit any of the usual patterns of PTSD delusions, not even a little bit. But then also it clearly couldn't have been real, right? Right. Nobody could die three times and still live.

Of course, Lucas also self-medicated. Just a little. Or a lot. Hey, what was stress leave for?

In the end, Lucas found that he was back to his old self surprisingly quickly, and the last half of his medical leave was really just... leave. Time off. There were quite a few days where he just watched the television. It was still in the bathroom, which suited him fine. He’d started to take a lot of baths. Actually, you could do a lot of things in the bath. Eventually he moved a bar fridge into the bathroom, and then he was really set up, but the day he fell asleep in the tub and woke up the next morning in ice cold water, he decided it might be time to tone it down a little.

On the day he moved the TV back to the living room, on a whim he decided to throw another movie night. This time, he'd do a marathon of vampire movies. That'd bring in all the peeps. He buried himself in designing a totally sweet poster for it. "Vampire film marathon folks, awwww yisss! it's gonna SUCK!!! BOO-YAH! 7pm" it read. Then he slapped that sucker on Facebook, and waited.

7pm came and went.

But at 7:30, Lucas' door buzzer went off.

"Hi Lucas, it's Marnie, from Cabela’s. Did I miss anything?"

He wasn’t sure what to say at first. How the hell did she get his address or even find him on Facebook? No wait, never mind, he didn't care. She was cool, knew her stuff, and had an outdoor store employee discount that could come in handy in the future, because Lucas was probably not going to submit that job application form after all.

He buzzed her in, opened the chips, dumped them in a bowl, straightened some of his couch blankets, and opened the door when she knocked.

“Hi!” he said.

"Greetings!" she said. "I trust that your apartment is adequately fortified? I have brought 'Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter.'"

"Uh, yeah, sure, come on in! I have, uh, chips," he said.

Marnie walked in and plonked herself down on the couch.

"Oh, I brought someone with me. He's out in the hall. He told me not to say anything."

Lucas turned back to the door and found himself face to face with Dr. Henry Morgan. His heart started pounding.

"Hello, Lucas," he said. "Is it a good time?"

Lucas stood staring at his boss dumbfounded. Just like the good old days.

"Is it safe to come in? I must say I would prefer not to be killed again." Henry added.

Wait, what? Lucas squinted at him, but he didn’t look like he was joking. At _all_.

Lucas hadn't expected this development. Which, now that he thought about it, was also utterly typical for anything involving Dr. Morgan. Lucas hesitated and then let him in.  What do you even say to your boss, when you're not even sure how many times you killed him? Talk about awkward social situations.

"We have much to discuss. According to my investigations, you, and your colleague Marnie there, are the only ones who have any real knowledge of what happened that night."

Marnie waved cheerfully.

"Hi, Doctor Morgan!"

Lucas looked between them. Had this been a setup? Henry smiled at Lucas.

"You left your receipt for Cabela’s in your duffel bag. The rest was not difficult to piece together, though Marnie _did_ execute me several times as I was trying to do so.”

“I _said_ I was sorry about that,” Marnie said around a mouthful of chips. “But I did appreciate the ability to test my stronghold’s defences.”

A pained expression crossed Dr. Morgan’s face.

“Please, let’s not get into that.”

“Incidentally I’d like to test my new siege crossbows, if you’re open to the—”

“Marnie, _no_.”

“All right, all right, it was just an _idea_.”

Lucas felt that he was somewhat behind on the conversation.

“Can we back up a little bit?”

Henry paused, then gestured to the couch.

“Lucas, sit down. I’ve a rather long story to tell you…”


End file.
